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UK's hardware talent is being wasted

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Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#441

Post by cylemons »

ahoka wrote: post #339
mrtksn wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree, the problem in Europe is not regulations or anything like that - it is a mindset issue. It is one of things that europeans can learn from Americans. My hypothesis is that this is a combination of old money and class consciousness. In other words, the rich are risk averse because all they care is preserving their wealth and the working class don’t believe and can’t even imagine that more is possible.

Should individuals routinely risk their own livelihood to benefit a select few capitalist? Does this improve the life of the average American? Seeing how they vote it seems generally it does not?

Havent FAANG companies improved the lives of the average American? They definitely did, and all these companies were created by ambitious individuals with a bold vision and prospect of making lots of money!

By taking big risks, one might ascend to this capitalist class if they succeed.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#442

Post by netdevphoenix »

tirant wrote: post #288
mrtksn wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree, the problem in Europe is not regulations or anything like that - it is a mindset issue. It is one of things that europeans can learn from Americans. My hypothesis is that this is a combination of old money and class consciousness. In other words, the rich are risk averse because all they care is preserving their wealth and the working class don’t believe and can’t even imagine that more is possible.

Regulations often stem from a particular mindset. However, they also serve to perpetuate that mindset. As a member of the working class, I find there’s little incentive to build something new or innovate because the effort required to navigate through all the burdensome regulations is overwhelming. On top of that, any additional income I might generate from bringing my ideas or initiatives to market would be taxed at…

I think this is a combination of a lack of supportive environment and a risk averse mindset. Employers will likely scoff at a CV with one or more entrepreneurial stints. The way I see it is this: if the prohibition era was implemented in the UK, people would still acquire alcohol against any and all barriers. The same drive doesn't exist for entrepreneurial goals. Regulations make things difficult but the critical problem is that the entrepreneurial mindset is not there

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#443

Post by petra »

Animats wrote: post #137

If engineering isn't near the factory, it's not as effective. Here's one of the most generic electronic components - a 1K resistor.[1] These sell for about US$0.0015 each. DigiKey has a list of many suppliers. There are a few old-line US resistor makers in there, including Bourns and Ohmite. They're price competitive with Chinese companies. But when you look up their engineering job locations, none are in the US or U…

There are plenty of industries where product engineering is done at a different company or place than product manufacturing.

For example, consumer electronics, industrial machines and robotics, telecom and medical devices.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#444

Post by GasVeteran »

walthamstow wrote: post #346
nobodywillobsrv wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or tired of 63% income tax rates in the middle of the income bands

Does London have a different tax policy to where Jaguar Land Rover is based?

You have to earn (much) more to have the same standard of living as outside of it. Therefore you pay more income tax and the cost of living is higher anyway.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#445

Post by marcinzm »

graemep wrote: post #243
r_thambapillai wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true, although I suppose a significant fraction of the decline at that time might be a result of the end of the Empire, which given that there are simply no such successful Empires anywhere in the world anymore was almost certainly inevitable. By comparison, the performance of the UK in the last 20 years vs the US or the Nordics is a singular tragedy.

Not greatly different from Germany or Nordic countries, or EU average, and better than France or Japan. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?... Its a Europe wide problem.

If that's adjusted for cost of living and inflation then isn't that hiding the actual economic changes? If GDP falls then cost of living would likely go down and vice versa.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#446

Post by coolThingsFirst »

The common European tragedy, if I could go back in time I would've never majored in CS. The salaries are just not worth the effort and struggle required to get there.

Much better to have partied and taken a lightweight major. Those extra 400-500 euros simply don't make up for the wasted youth reading Tannenbaum.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#447

Post by t43562 »

pfdietz wrote: post #111

Reading all this negativity about the UK made me wonder: is it possible that the UK throwing in the towel and asking to become part of the US could actually become reality? It's an admittedly outlandish idea, but suddenly it didn't seem entirely preposterous.

No way. There would be a much bigger loss of "sovrinty" than people were prepared to put up with in the EU and that's in the miraculous case that the US wanted it.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#448

Post by GasVeteran »

retrac98 wrote: post #373
nextos wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To some extent, this also applies to software. Except for DeepMind and a few other select places like Altos Labs, getting past £100k is hard , especially outside London. Unless you go into finance, of course. But then, you have to stick to London. Finance is like a black hole that sucks a big chunk of the mathematical, CS and statistical UK talent. They have very proactive recruiters trying to e.g. connect with Oxbri…

I know plenty of engineers (web application developers) making over £100-£150k outside of London, usually in fairly low-stress remote jobs. The pay is clearly nothing compared to the US, but I wouldn’t say it was massively hard for them to get where they are. They all have 5+ years experience at a senior level, and are otherwise just reliable, capable, low-maintenance employees, but maybe that’s rare!

They are almost always contractors. If you work permanent it tops out max at about £75,000-90,000.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#449

Post by cdnthrownawy39 »

mrtksn wrote: post #299
tirant wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulations often stem from a particular mindset. However, they also serve to perpetuate that mindset. As a member of the working class, I find there’s little incentive to build something new or innovate because the effort required to navigate through all the burdensome regulations is overwhelming. On top of that, any additional income I might generate from bringing my ideas or initiatives to market would be taxed at…

Which regulations exactly you find burdensome or overwhelming and stopping you from attempting the become wealthy, change your life and the world maybe? Why would you skip having 1 billion Euros just because you could have had 2 Billion but the government took the rest? Up until 1960's rich Americans payed %91 tax, and yet they kept their entrepreneurial spirit - why you can't do the same at the stated %50? When Appl…

Canadian here.

It's not so much any single regulation, as it is there's so many little ones that seem reasonable on the face of it. But it's also that what makes the ruling Canadian class so is the authority to bypass those regulations.

I can give one personal example; I was able to secure some public funding application for a non profit I'm affiliated with. But the only reason I was able to do that was because my parents were university classmates of the elected official that was able to pressure the staff that was handling the paperwork to prioritize and approve our application ahead of probably the hundreds in front of us. The official's going to get a nice thank you dinner out of it, but I also had to offer some information that the official could financially benefit from for him to even consider it, and a promise of some future favors.

For better or worst that's how a lot of Canadian system works. Grant applications, personal tax work, personal and business banking, etc. Anyone can get through it eventually for anything. But if you want it done quickly and in a way probably won't get tied up in the system itself, you better know someone that owes you a favor.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#450

Post by paganel »

graemep wrote: post #420
paganel wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the last 20 or 25 years the UK has been coasting on the North Sea oil&gas money, I'd say that worked up until the early 2010s, and then on the almost complete financialization of its economy and on selling out whatever pieces of the economy could still be sold out (that includes part of their beloved NHS). But that can only work for so long and is beneficial in the medium to long-term for a very limited number of…

I agree, but my point is that the France, Germany, and other comparable European economies have the same or similar problems. The UK is not some exception, it is a typical western economy. The US is an outlier (doing better). > that includes part of their beloved NHS A more severe problem is that the NHS was debt funded (mostly through off balance sheet debt) in the 2000s. The government kept their promise not to inc…

Germany was quite fine until a couple of years ago, mostly thanks to very cheap Russian gas. About France I agree, they have the same problems as the Brits do, maybe because they lost access to cheap African mineral resources as a result of Francafrique [1] ending? I couldn't tell, to be honest.

But at the end of the day the point remains that if you want to have a world-beating economy you need to have access to relatively cheap inputs (which includes energy), in large enough amounts, otherwise your economy will just not make it. The Americans have that (people forget how much of an economic boom gas fracking brought with it), the Chinese have that (thanks to its very large population and access to natural resources that is reasonable enough, they're no 1930s Japan), India has that (thanks to its very large and young population), even Russia has that (thanks to its natural resources), meanwhile Europe has almost no demographic advantage and almost no natural resources left to exploit. "Innovation" (which is also lacking) and financialization alone can get you only so far.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7afrique

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